


Wheel in the Sky

by sparrowshellcat



Series: The Journey Series [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fast and the Furious Series, Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Big Bang Challenge, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-18
Updated: 2011-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-27 12:37:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowshellcat/pseuds/sparrowshellcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years ago, Xander Harris set out for a roadtrip, only to have the engine drop out of his car in Oxnard, just an hour out of Sunnydale. He stayed, and by chance or fate, he isn't sure which, he falls into a life as a mechanic that specializes in street racing cars. That's how he ends up rebuilding a 1970 Dodge Charger that a sweet girl named Mia tells him her brother Dom rolled.<br/>Only the car seems to have a life of its own, and it ends up taking Xander on the roadtrip he never ended up taking, because the Charger thinks he needs to meet Dom.<br/>You don't own a car like the Charger. She owns you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wheel in the Sky

It had seemed like an awesome idea at the time.

Xander had paid a pittance for his uncle's car, filled the tank with gas, shoved all of his life's savings – a few hundred bucks – in his wallet, and set out for one last hedonistic fling of life before he had to find some work and be a responsible adult.

For an hour, he'd been right.

Top down, that warm California breeze blowing through his hair, he drove. The road spread open before him like a ribbon bookmark in the journal in which he was penning the chronicle of his life, scrawling the words for his adventure out with the wheels of his Uncle Rory's old convertible. It was pure freedom, unadulterated, any possibility open to him so long as the engine kept running.

Naturally, nothing went that smoothly in Xander Harris' life, ever, and the engine stopped running out of Oxnard, just an hour from home.

Xander had rented out a shitty little motel room, with what was left of his life's savings, and pushed the car to Sandy's Garage on the corner. Sandy took one look at the engine, spit a shot of dark tobacco chaw at the floor and drawled that the oil pan had cracked, so it was siezed.

Was it fixable? Xander had wanted to know.

Sure, was the answer, with enough time and enough money.

The teenager had no money, but he did have _time_ , so they made a deal, unusual though it was. See, Sandy's wife, Venice, had run off the week before, and she was usually the one who handled all the business dealings for the garage. She wrote the receipts, called the customers due for a tune up, and kept track of the money. Sandy wasn't any good at this clerical thing, so he was rather at a loss. What he figured was the best bet was to offer Xander a trade – the teenager worked for him, doing all the office work up front, and he'd fix his car for him. Slowly, whenever things were slow, because Xander would need to work a lot to make up for that kinda work.

But he sorta figured that was the kind of thing he could do, all things considered.

It took four weeks at Sandy's before Xander was finally able to explain the repairs that had been done without using words like “doodad” and “thingamabob” and another four weeks after that before he could identify pieces by sight. He placed the orders for the garage, and got good at predicting which parts were going to break more often. He'd been there two months the first time Sandy had hollered for him to drop the comic book and get his ass in the garage to help him with a tricky lugnut. Two months after  _that_ , and Sandy hired a girl named Samantha to run the front office, and Xander was in the garage full time.

  
  


\---

  
  


Running his hand through his hair, Xander leaned back from the bumper of the car he was working on, a 1967 Impala with a sweet custom engine and a body that needed a little bit of hammering out, but he was bound and determined to get the engine running the way he wanted it to, which was perfect. He was good at that, apparently, at the getting engines running like they were new. Sandy told him, a few months after he started working, that he had a gift. A gift for figuring out what exactly was wrong with an engine, and figuring out exactly which part to replace, or which piece to weld, to make it run like a clock again. 

It had been ten years. 

He had never gone home, not after... everything, and now, years later, there just wasn't a home to  _go_ home to. Sunnydale was dead and gone, and his friends were scattered to the four winds. Some literally – Buffy's ashes had been spread over the remains of the crater that used to be the town she protected. The rest were sort of figurative – Giles and Willow were in England, and the rest of the kids he'd gone to high school with were scattered throughout the world. He'd gotten a postcard, once, from Spike of all people. 

_Wish you were here_ from Sicily. 

He'd actually written a postcard back, a  _Thank god you're not stuck here with me in Oxnard California_ one he'd scrawled on a piece of paper himself, but it had been returned, “No Such Address”. He hadn't really been surprised.

So he made a new life for himself in a shitty little town called Oxnard, took over the garage when Sandy decided to get the hell out of Dodge, and that was his life now.

Well, it wasn't  _such_ a bad life. Not really. 

Okay, it wasn't such a hot life, either. He liked working on the cars, so that was all right, because he could spend his days in the garage, bent over or under the hoods of his cars, covered in grease, tightening bolts and welding and replacing parts and making engines run like they were new, in perfect timing. 

He lived alone, over the garage, and he didn't get to see any of the world these days, but he lived vicariously through the cars that came into his garage. He would run his fingers over the heads of the engines, and imagine the miles they'd traveled. 

An engine roared into his lot, and he glanced up, eyes widening slightly. 

Son of a bitch, now  _that_ was a nice car.

Xander pushed off of the bumper of the Impala, and grabbed a cloth, scrubbing the worst of the oil off of his hands. Funny, clients knew he ran a garage, but didn't want to see oil on his hands. Go figure. It used to bother him. But there were things you got used to in life, and... well. This was his life to get used to.

Stepping out into the golden light of the sun, still wiping his hands, he ran his eyes across the hood like he hoped to run his fingers, next. 

1970s Dodge Charger.

_Damn_ .

It looked like hell. The hood was half crumpled in, the hood was bashed, the windshield shattered out in a spider web pattern. He was surprised, really, that it had been in good enough shape to even get it on that truck to get it here – it looked like it had been rolled a handful of times, though structurally it was  _mostly_ intact. Drastic damages, and it would take someone like him maybe months to fix it, provided he had the time and the resources. A real body shop might take a week, if they were really good. He'd never seen one that would do with it what he'd do with it, though. He'd give it heart and soul. Those big shops would just make it a  _car_ . It was up on a truck, strapped into place, clearly the front axle was broken.

“Hey,” he called, lifting a hand to wave at the driver. 

The driver's side door of the towing truck opened, and a woman slid out of it, a small petite slip of a thing with dark eyes and dark hair. She looked serious and stern now, but there were little creases in the corners of her eyes, and he could see that usually, she was more impish. Happy. 

“Nice car.” Xander said, cheerfully. “Could use a little TLC.”

“You Xander Harris?”

“That's what they call me,” he grinned, lightly running his fingers along the edge of the hood, cataloging the bumps where the hood buckled, where the metal bent and shifted, keeping track of the work he was already mentally cataloging, the work he'd have to do. “I take it you need a bit of work done, huh?”

“Hm.” She smiled tightly, glancing at the car. “I'd do it myself, but...”

“Cars aren't your thing?” He guessed.

“They're my brother's thing.” She confirmed, with a slight smile. “Don't get me wrong, I can work with the best of them, but I think _this_ is a little out of my reach. This is a little much for me to do. I hear you have something of a gift when it comes to cars.”

“I've been told that before, too.” He said, with a soft smile.

“This is my brother's car.” She rested her hand on the crumpled roof, eyes far off, her focus on something other than the buckled metal under her fingertips. “I need it to be perfect again. My – his _friend_ was going to do it, but something happened, I don't – I just need this car fixed. Can you do it?”

He let out a low whistle, considering the car thoughtfully. “Yes.”

Her shoulders slumped slightly, relieved.

“But it won't be fast, and it won't be cheap.” He admitted, patting the metal of the hood. It almost pained him to admit it, because he was afraid that she'd balk, like some of his prospective clients had done before. He desperately wanted to get under the hood of this car, to get his hands on that engine. And if she backed off because of the price... well, he wouldn't get that chance, would he? “I'm cheaper than some of the big places, but... I work alone, sometimes it takes me a bit longer to get the car settled out.”

“Don't worry, he isn't going to be coming back for it just yet.” She smiled, faintly, patting the roof of the car. 

“Well then. I think we could work out an arrangement,” Xander grinned.

She smiled softly, and he caught the hint of her impishness, what he'd seen hiding just under the surface of her dark eyes. “Thank you.”

“Keys?” He asked, holding out his hand, cheerfully.

Laughing softly, she dropped them into his hand. “So how much  _is_ it going to run me?”

“I have to check,” he crossed his arms, considering the lines of the car. He could see the clean lines hidden under the crumpled metal, as though it was somehow overexposed, like an x-ray overlaid over the skeleton of the car itself, all spread out like a buffet in his mind's eye, beautiful and full of so much potential. “I'll have to get it up on the lift, find out if the frame is twisted... hm. It start?”

“It does,” she nodded.

He clambered up onto the truck bed itself, and leaned in the broken driver's side window to press the keys into place, and cranked the engine. It started immediately, and while it definitely didn't sound like he knew it should, at least it did start, and kept running for a few long moments before he turned it off.

“Sounds like it runs not _bad_...”

“It ticks on the second stroke.” She said, quietly.

He glanced at her for a moment, arching a brow. “Girl after my own heart. It does tick a little. So there'll be some engine work, too. Hm. Well, tell you what, how about I get it up on the lifts and take a look now, and I’ll give you a call with the quote. You can decide then.”

“You know a man named Memphis Raines?”

Xander hesitated, glancing over at her. She was such a tiny, sweet little slip of a girl, why would a girl like her be tangled up with a car thief like Memphis Raines? For that matter, why was a man like  _him_ tied up with Memphis, so there was entirely a possibility that this was a trap of some kind. He'd known him before he cleaned up, and now, he knew him after, too. He was a sweet man, bit too over protective, but sweet. And now, Mia was checking him out... could be checking to see whether she knew him before, or after. Making sure he didn't have any criminal connections. Well, a little late for that... he liked cars, not always what happened  _in_ the cars. “...yeah, I know a man named Memphis Raines.”

“The work you did on his car was impressive.” She said, quietly, smiling softly. “That's why I was sent to talk to you.”

“Mm. Good to know he's sending business my way.” He smirked. “Maybe I ought to send him a fruit basket.”

She smirked, and offered her tiny hand. “Mia Toretto.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Mia Toretto,” he said, shaking her hand, grinning, figuring out of all of the women who had ever come into his garage, she was the least likely to be frustrated with the possibility of oil on her hands. “Now, let's see what we can do about getting your brother's car back on the road. Metaphorically.”

  
  


\---

  
  


“Hey, sexy.”

Xander walked downstairs from his little apartment, early morning dawn pink light just beginning to creep into the windows. He unlocked the roll up garage door, and rolled it up towards the ceiling, letting more of that pink gold light pour into the garage.

He stood there for a moment, just breathing in the crisp, dewy air, then turned to face the one he'd been addressing.

Specifically, the car on the lifts.

The Dodge Charger really was a thing of beauty. It had always been a car built for power, built for speed, several thousand pounds of pure American muscle. He had the engine out of it, now, and had been relieved to see that, despite the damage to the outside of the body, the engine was still in good shape. Oh, it'd need a bit of work, too, but a light rebuild should be enough. It'd clearly been completely overhauled before, and it had been carefully maintained before... well. The crash.

Oh, he had questions about the crash, all right. Like how the hell anyone could  _do_ something like this to a car like this.

But Xander wasn't an idiot. He  _had_ worked with Memphis Raines before.

(Well, actually, the fact that he had, in fact, worked with Memphis Raines before could be definitive proof for the argument that he was, in fact, an idiot, but at least he could argue that he was nobody's fool.)

This car had a lot of the same tell tale signs he'd seen a thousand times before, owning a small body shop in Southern California. People would bring their cars to him, instead of big chain body shops, hoping that since he was sort of something of a “little guy” business, he wouldn't report what was obvious as day to the cops. And no, Xander had never reported one of those street racing cars to the cops. You didn't do that to a car like that.

The NOS hookups alone were a major giveaway. It was a racing car. Maybe it had even been legal, once.

So he didn't have to imagine  _too_ hard to figure out what had happened to the dark beauty, but he was still curious about, well,  _details_ . He lived vicariously through cars. He liked to know what had happened to them in their “lives”.

He trailed his fingers over the engine – a 426 Hemi, with a BDS 9-71 supercharger, colour him suitably impressed – brushing the headers with his fingertips. When the car was in pieces like this, it was easier to catalogue what work had to be done. And just how intimidating the work was, he supposed – shit, the engine looked comical outside of its metal skin, like someone was trying to overcompensate.

“So, baby...” Xander stepped under the frame, running his hand over a support strut. “Let's find out what happened to you.”

About three in the afternoon, he finally called Mia, sitting on the counter in the front as he did. She picked up on the fourth ring, and sounded genuinely pleased to hear his voice when he told her it was Xander from Xander's Muscles calling. (And yes, he  _had_ named his classic custom restoration body shop that so that he could giggle inappropriately every time he said it.)

“So what's the damage?”

“Money or body work?” Xander asked, cheekily.

“Work. I can deal with the money.” Mia answered, without hesitation. It didn't surprise him, not really. For people willing to spend the time and money to repair a car like this, money wasn't the reason they did it. They'd _get_ the money. It was about the passion. He could almost imagine his father's reaction if he had called him and told him about the Charger. Take the engine out and sell it and put the body in for scrap. “How long will it take you to fix it?”

“Realistically?”

“Preferably, yes.” She said, and he could almost imagine her half smile.

“Six months. I got to pull all the kinks out, and a lot of the body panels will be write-offs, unless you really want me to take the time to try and salvage - “

“Yes.” She said, without hesitation.

“It's going to be more expensive,” he warned. “Once I pull all the metal straight, I’ll have to fill it with epoxy... I mean, don't get me wrong, I _can_ do it...”

“Then do it.” Mia said, firmly.

“S'good as done.” He smirked. “I got a place that makes custom glass for me, and a friend is already out looking for a parts car for me... it's gonna be doable, Mia, it'll just take, you know, time.”

“And money.”

Xander cleared his throat. “Well, I sorta  _am_ shelving any other jobs to work on your car, and the electric company  _does_ like getting paid...”

“I thought as much. Look, send me the bills for the parts as you get them, and...” She sighed softly. “I'm sure we can work something out.”

“Thanks, Mia.” He hesitated. “Thanks for – ah, for letting me work on your car.”

“Don't you get all sentimental over that car, too.” She laughed.

“Can't help it,” he smirked, turning to look back through the door that led into the garage, considering the black car still sitting on the lift. Xander never had been good at seeing the wrecks people brought into the shop as what they were. He always saw them as what they once had been, and what they could be again. Funny, Xander never went anywhere. He'd set out to see the world, ten years ago, and all he'd ended up seeing was Southern California. He still had never left the state, his whole life. “I live vicariously through the cars that come in my shop. Try to imagine the places they've been. And something tells me this car has a story.”

There was a silence on the other line for a moment, then Mia admitted, “It does.”

“Thought so.”

  
  


\---

  
  


Xander stepped back, pushing his goggles up on his head, considering the panel he'd just finished pulling out. He hadn't been kidding when he told Mia that pulling out the existing panels would take a lot of epoxy and sanding and work – even a cursory once over let him see at least a good dozen spots that would need filling in. but he'd already stripped off the old paint, and he was working with bare, if old metal, now.

Beautiful.

“You're gonna be a beauty again, aintcha girl?” He murmured, crouching to run his hand along the metal. It was rough to the touch, a lot like he imagined the skin of a shark must feel like. Rough like low grit sandpaper, but barely thrumming with ill-contained power. “You'll turn every head just like you did, in the good days.”

The metal under his fingertips actually shuddered slightly, shivering like a horse trying to shake flies off of its flank.

Xander jerked his hands back, startled. “What the...?”

The car had moved. Or rather, the front quarter panel had moved, but that was – that was just ridiculous. Cars don't move on their own.

But then, teenaged girls don't slay vampires, and you don't blow up your high school to kill the town mayor after he'd turned into a giant snake dragon demon thing, neither. So out of all the things he'd seen in his life, cars that could move on their own actually wasn't even close to the weirdest of them.

He lay his palms flat against the metal, waiting. No movement, not even a hint of one.

“Damn, I have not been getting enough sleep,” Xander muttered, and pushed himself up to his feet, running his hand through his hair as he stared down at the panel. “Talking to my cars and thinking they're _moving_... either that or I need to lay off the sci fi.”

It had to be his imagination, after all.

Cars don't move.

And weird shit like cars moving, if such a thing could even actually happen, would have happened in Sunnydale, back when it was still standing, not in  _Oxnard_ . There was nothing here. Hellmouths certainly wouldn't move to Oxnard.

L.A.? Totally.

Oxnard? No.

The longer he worked on the Charger, the more he realized that he  _had_ to have been imagining things. After all, if just talking to it made it move, then the extensive monologues he held with the car as he worked on the rebuilding, the epoxy, the buffing, should have caused some more movement. He kept up the monologues even as he took the power sander to the epoxy'd sides, though naturally his voice was muffled by the sound of the sander itself, and by the elaborate mask he wore. If the car was somehow alive, or sentient, or cursed, or whatever it was, it was  _then_ , he thought, that it would have started complaining.

It never moved again.

As he worked, lulled by the otherwise silent garage and the hum of the machinery, Xander told the Charger everything. As metal smoothed out under his hands he ranted about vampires, as he sprayed layer after layer of primer down on the bare metal, he detailed the ins and outs of his brief relationship with Cordelia, as he installed the vinyl he explained how they'd killed the mayor. It was as he installed the glass that he told the Charger how he craved adventure. He wanted to get out there, he wanted to see the world, he wanted to move beyond the little corner of the world he'd found himself in. He told the Charger about Uncle Rory's car, about ending up in Oxnard, about working for Sandy, taking over Sandy's place, about finding himself working on more and more street racing muscle cars until he started being considered a bit of an expert on them. As he fit the headlights back in, he explained how he had met Memphis Raine, how he'd been pulled in over his head with cars that had turned out to be stolen and a man that stole hearts like he stole cars. He hadn't actually told any  _human_ about that awkward history to his dealings with the car thief, but the Charger was a car that seemed to understand secrets.

Xander was starting to think he really needed a therapist, or something. Normal people didn't tell their secrets to  _cars_ .

At least, not cars that didn't belong to them.

“Xander!”

He yelped, and thumped back on his ass on the concrete floor, startled, and scrambled to catch the gasket he'd been holding before he dropped it. He caught it against his chest, and twisted to peer up at the speaker, who turned out to be Mia, dressed in a yellow sundress with a dark brown sweater over it. She flushed when she realized she'd frightened him, and apologized. “Sorry, I didn't mean to make you stop, I just...”

Xander pushed himself up off the ground, setting the head gasket on the little table beside him. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing's _wrong_ , that's the point!”

He blinked at her, a little confused, watching as she stepped closer to the Charger, which was still up on blocks pending the engine rebuild and the interior reconstruction, but the body was now intact. The dents, the dings, the wrenches – they were gone. Xander had straightened all the lines, and had repainted it with the same high gloss black that it had once gleamed with. He thought the progress was going pretty well, so far, himself. 

“It's beautiful,” she breathed, resting her palms on the hood.

“Oh,” he laughed sheepishly, stepping forward, tucking a lock of shaggy brown curls behind his ear. “Good. I was afraid it wasn't going to be, you know, exactly as you remembered. Does it look like what you remember?”

“It _may_ be better.” She admitted, then looked up at him. “This is why I wanted you to do this.”

He blinked. “It is?”

“It is,” Mia confirmed, smiling softly. She was a genuinely beautiful woman. “Because they say you give your cars a soul.”

He laughed, awkwardly, touching the hood ornament lightly. “Don't say that too loud, knowing my luck, it'd be true.”

“That's what I’m hoping for,” Mia said, softly.

  
  


\---

  
  


He sort of thought there should be more ceremony for dropping an engine back into a car.

There wasn't, it was just such a routine thing, really, to take a beast like a Hemi, to lower it back into the engine bay, chain clicking link by link down as he lowered it to sit in place. In his mind, it was like putting the heart back into the patient's chest after open heart surgery. It wasn't just an engine, it was the living, breathing heart blood of the machine, ready to pump that clean racing fuel blood through the veins of the car.

But no, it was just what it had been before – he lowering the engine in, and fastening it into place with the same old bolts any car had.

But it wasn't just any car, was it, the Charger?

There was something special about it. It wasn't that moment he swore it moved, that had been a trick of the hour and his lack of sleep and a million other logical explanations. No, there was something else, something undeniably  _special_ about the Charger.

He thought, when he was tightening the blower into place, making sure the valves flipped open right, flashing the red paint inside, that it might be the engine. There was something special about it.

It wasn't the make – a 426 Hemi might not have been  _standard_ in the car, but it had been an option, when new. And sure, the BDC 9-71 supercharger with it was certainly an unusual combination, but not unheard of it you really wanted  _power_ out of your car. It was hard to pinpoint exactly, because it  _was_ just a normal engine, or as normal as a tricked out, NOS injected Hemi engine got in a 1970 Charger, but there was something just not quite  _standard_ about that engine.

He wasn't sure what it was, not exactly, but there was something he couldn't put his finger on.

Xander sort of suspected it was the one piece he'd never seen before, a custom piece in the head gasket. He figured it was just decorative, when he'd first spotted it, a diamond shaped blue piece embedded into the metal. When he'd found it, he thought naturally that it would really only be right to keep a little touch like that in place, and to his relief, the part it was set into hadn't needed replacing when he rebuilt the engine.

But when he'd gotten to really cleaning it up so that he could paint and everything, he was shocked to discover that it wasn't just a blue metal thing.

It was  _glass_ .

Harder than any glass he'd ever seen before, sure, but just glass, either way, a diamond shape that turned out to be a whole little cube, embedded in the metal. Once it was polished up, it seemed to almost glow, as though lit from within, and when he brushed his fingers over it, it seemed to pulse, like a heartbeat. He thought there was a good chance that he  _should_ be alarmed by a thing like that, but the simple truth was that he wasn't, so that was simply that.

What was it, exactly? Mia didn't have a clue. Maybe her brother would know, she suggested. She'd try to ask.

He shrugged, and accepted that he'd probably never have an answer.

But it almost broke Xander's heart, it really did, on that Thursday night, when he sat in the driver's seat, the bucket sides curled around him like a warm embrace of leather, and he carefully fit the custom steering wheel cap into place. The rest of the wheel itself had been cracked, and the leather had peeled, so he'd had to replace it, using spare parts. But the cap he'd salvaged, because he'd never seen anything like it, and wasn't sure he would've recreated it if he tried. It was just a resin bevel, but the logo inside he'd not recognized – it wasn't the Charger, it wasn't Hemi, wasn't Mopar – it wasn't even NOS, though that logo seemed to have been scattered in a good half dozen places when he'd gotten it. If pressed to describe it, Xander would have to admit that it sort of reminded him of a face, albeit a very mechanical one that people would only think was a face because people tended to find faces in anything. Looking for an ally, maybe. 

A kindred spirit.

It was the last step, the very last piece in the Charger shaped puzzle Mia had given him to do, and six months, two weeks and four days after it had arrived on his lot, he was finished with the Charger. It was sort of a painful thing to do, knowing that tomorrow morning, he'd call Mia, and tell her to come get her brother's car.

Oh, he didn't want to.

But it wasn't his car, was it?

He patted the hood, after he'd finished up, and said, “Thanks for listening, babe. You're a good car.”

And Xander flicked the light off, reluctantly. But even in the darkness, he could see the perfect clean lines burned into his eyes, like it was seared in his retinas in black light. 

There would be other cars. Maybe even other Chargers.

But this one, she was  _special_ .

  
  


\---

  
  


An alarm woke Xander.

At first, he thought it was just his alarm clock, and he rolled over to slap the offending piece of plastic, but the damned alarm kept wailing, and the clock just tumbled off his dresser.

“What...?” He frowned, confused, and tumbled out of his bed in much the same way, then realized exactly what it was.

The intruder alarm on the garage doors, downstairs.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” he gasped, bolting for the stairs. He'd been robbed before, had a couple teenagers try to bust open his safe, and ended up just making off with some car parts. That had been the whole reason he'd had the alarms installed.

What he did not expect was to see his garage door bashed outwards and the tail lights of the Charger rapidly disappearing in the darkness.

“No!” He gasped, horrified, and bolted outside.

He threw himself bodily into the driver's seat of his old convertible. It hadn't been much to look at when he'd bought it, but he'd made it a point of personal and professional pride to make the car that had gotten him into all of this in the first place into the best damn car he knew, and that sucker had a 396 under that hood – and tore off after the Charger.

It was a good thing he'd chosen the car he had. The Charger had been  _bred_ for speed, and Xander's own ten second car was the only one in his arsenal that had a snowball's chance in hell of catching up.

He closed the gap, quickly, but whoever was driving  _this_ Charger was no amateur. They took turns sharp and neat, and when they hit the freeway, they slammed the hammer down. He could  _see_ the moment the engine fully took hold, and the car  _ripped_ down the road like a horse frothing at the mouth, chopping at the bit for the chance to fly.

Xander grit his teeth, and slammed his own foot down.

Oh sure, if he was smart, he'd call the police, but the last thing he'd thought to grab when he left his bed was his cell phone, and one thing his car did  _not_ have was a built in phone or OnStarr or whatever it was those soccer moms had in their characterless, faceless SUVs. His car was  _fast_ , and right now, that was what he needed. So he chased them.

And son of a bitch, that person  _knew_ he was following.

They were playing with him. If ever Xander fell behind a touch – and that didn't happen often, he  _was_ driving a car that could finish a quarter mile in ten seconds – they would slow down to match, then the moment he got  _just_ close enough that he thought he could see the shape of the driver in the front, they'd slam on the gas again, tearing off ahead of him. They were taunting, teasing, and when he got his hands on that driver...

Was it a really terribly thing to admit, though, that he was enjoying watching the Charger being driven? Oh, he was still furious that some asshole had stolen his charge, but it  _was_ nice to see how it drove.

He'd tested it himself, soon as he'd had the tires back on, before the interior was even in place. He had to see how the rebuild had taken, to make sure she was handling like she should. It had been a sense that he could do absolutely anything, when he had sat behind that wheel, the engine rumbling through the whole frame, the steering wheel trembling beneath his fingers, begging to be turned, to be taken for a ride, to be ridden. Begging to  _fly_ .

Xander had never claimed to be a racer. He was no driver. Memphis had asked him if he wanted a job, once, and he'd laughed.

People seemed to assume that if you could make an engine purr with a wrench and your bare hands, then naturally you could make it scream down the road. Xander had also fixed more cars than he could count that had been damaged by someone assuming the exact opposite – if you can drive the car, you can fix it, too, right?

Sure, a lot of the drivers he knew did both. Half the time, they couldn't have afforded it any other way. But plenty of drivers also just had a stable of mechanics on hand, the same way that NASCAR drivers did. He'd been offered jobs like that before. But Xander didn't just want to work on one car forever – if he did, he'd have just been a construction worker or something, and worked on his own car in the garage on weekends. But Xander wasn't no weekend mechanic. Cars were his passion. His life.

And someone was stealing his latest masterpiece.

Whoever was driving it was a driver. A real driver, not just some schmuck who had bought an Acura off of a buddy and tricked it out with undercarriage lighting and a spoiler and figured they had a street racing car now. This was a driver that had handled a powerful car before, someone that knew how to handle an engine like that Hemi. Hell, if he didn't know better, he'd have thought this person had experience handling the Charger itself.

That gave him pause.

No, Mia would never...

Would she?

No, of course not. If it was a matter of not wanting to pay for the work he'd done, well, she had been paying him all along, why would she stop  _now_ ? And if it was a matter of taking it for a spin, she could have done that legitimately tomorrow.

Besides, he'd sort of gotten the impression, from their conversations, that her  _brother_ was the reckless, irresponsible one, not her.  _She_ was the mature, responsible adult. Her brother was the one that had rolled the Charger while presumably doing something he  _really_ wasn't supposed to be doing. (He'd had to epoxy out bullet holes. Xander knew the signs of a car that had been through hell.)

He'd heard of drivers getting their rides though less than legitimate means – he'd hooked up with Memphis, of course he knew that – but it had never really happened to him before. Teens trying to steal a car for a joy ride? Sure. Street racers looking to get a powerful ten second car so they could win some races? That was harder to believe, somehow.

It wasn't like the Charger was just some shitty soccer mom's shitty Kia. It couldn't just  _disappear_ . Racing cars, true racing cars, were distinctive. Unique. People remembered them, and unless they remembered you racing – and losing – for pink slips in it, they didn't see you in someone else's car and just assume you bought it. These cars were like beloved race horses – pampered daily, then raced hard once in awhile, sometimes nightly, then babied before racing again. They became a driver's life, their everything.

It was part of the reason so many drivers hated Memphis, for that stunt he pulled a few years back.

Xander jerked back to the present when the Charger abruptly hit the brakes in front of him. Swearing, he slammed his foot down on the brakes himself, gravel flying as he skidded to a stop behind the other car. He threw the door open and was half out of the car when the Charger's wheels suddenly spun, gravel spraying back at him as it took off down the road, fishtailing slightly from the rapid acceleration.

“Shit,” he gasped, and slammed the door, almost catching his own foot in it.

The thief was teasing him.

Well, he'd show  _them_ .

As the Charger veered off the highway and onto an unmarked strip of asphalt, Xander flicked one of the two red gauge covers set into the centre console up. He shouldn't really do this yet, seeing as he didn't know where the end goal was, but the Charger's bouncing headlight beams up ahead revealed a straight as a pin strip of concrete that could end god-knows-when. He had to end this chase, and he had to take a chance on doing it now.

The Charger dipped to the left slightly, and he took his chance.

Xander tugged his own wheel slightly right, then slammed down the button to release the first of the two tanks of NOS he kept stashed in a compartment built into the back seat of his car. He felt the moment the cylinders took it in, and the engine caught it up. For a brief second, it was as though time stood still – then the engine roared, and he was ripped faster and further up the road, as though he and the body of the car were struggling to keep up with his engine.

This was happiness.

This was why Xander had wanted to travel. It wasn't the destination, it was the getting there, it was the pounding of his heart, his back pressed hard into the seat of his chair, the massive machine that surrounded him responsive to his slightest touch, his lightest redirection. This was what he wanted, to live life on the razor's edge, racing towards eternity.

If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.

His old car screamed up beside the Charger, then overtook the black beast, propelled by racing fuel and NOS, past the stolen car. He waited until he was sure there was enough space between them and he could feel the engine starting to slip back to normal, losing that momentary flash of automotive superpowers, then wrenched the wheel to the left.

Xander's car skidded in a wide sideways arch, his headlights sliding across the hood and windshield of the Charger.

As he'd expected, the other car's driver was forced to wrench their own wheel to the left to avoid a collision, and they both shot off the road, sending massive plumes of dust and gravel into the air. They both skidded like some massive ballet of metal and glass, in tandem for one beautiful moment, and Xander thought his gamble had paid off, that the Charger's driver was going to stop.

But then the other car fishtailed again, and skidded back onto the road, and continued as it had before.

Xander swore, colourfully.

Why was life never like the action movies? If this were an action movie, that silly little stunt of his would have stopped the bad guy, and it would have set them up for a dramatic show down in the desert. Wasn't that how life was supposed to work?

But no, he was just chasing the stolen car as he had before, but now he was down one tank of NOS.

He was really starting to regret putting NOS in the Charger.

The other driver took off again, naturally, and he slammed the gas back down, resigning himself to giving chase, for now. He wasn't going to lose Mia's car on her, especially not after all the work he'd put into it.

They'd been driving for well over an hour when Xander realized that he was pretty sure that somewhere, they'd crossed the border. Naturally, there had been no “Welcome to Mexico” sign, but he knew his map of the state, and at the speeds they were travelling, he was pretty damn sure they weren't in California anymore. He glanced about, more, worried about border patrols. He wasn't sure that “But officer, I was following the race car that was stolen from my garage, honest” counted as a valid reason to be illegally crossing the border. But go figure, he'd sort of assumed it was more difficult to sneak over said Mexico/California border. If you believed the news, it was a really fucking big deal, after all. And what exactly was this guy planning to do with the Charger in  _Mexico_ , anyway?

A million terrifying possibilities occurred to him, but he shoved those down.

Instead, he decided, that in a twisted sort of way, perhaps he ought to be grateful to this thief. They had managed to do what he'd never actually managed to do himself, which was getting him to travel outside of California. Hell, out of the country! He'd finally managed to do what he'd been dreaming of ever since he got his license at sixteen, and he was sitting behind the wheel of his very own super powered car, tearing down the road with no destination in mind. Just going and seeing what happened.

Still, when they started passing farms, then little gatherings of houses, he was starting to realize just how screwed he was.

He might not have been sure at first, but as the pre-dawn light started bleeding over the horizon, it was clear that he was definitely  _not_ in California anymore. The Charger's driver was avoiding the main roads – for understandable reasons – but even so, it was pretty obvious that they were in Mexico, and Xander was pretty sure that his high school Spanish (which he'd been shit at) was good enough to tell him that he was in Tijuana.

Lovely.

Skirting around a small gathering of houses, the Charger suddenly opened the throttle right out and absolutely screamed down the narrow alleys. Xander did the same, naturally, but he genuinely thought that the other must have used NOS, for a moment, because he was really getting the lead out, but the way the Charger abruptly swung into the garage bay of a small body shop defied that thinking.

Xander slammed on the brakes, pinning the Charger where it was with his own car, frankly shocked by the stupidity of the other driver, letting himself get pinned like that, then bolted out of his own car, leaving the engine running. He'd learned his lesson.

“Get the fuck out of the car!” He roared, rounding the car, slapping his hand against the driver's side window. “Get - !”

There was no one  _in_ the driver's seat.

“What the...?” He gaped at the Charger, dumbfounded. There was no way that anyone would have had time to run, he'd pulled up right behind them. _Right_ behind them. And he hadn't seen the door open neither, and Xander swore he knew the ins and outs of that Charger as well as he knew his own car. There was no other way for them to have gotten out, he knew that car completely.

They had to be hiding. Somehow. He couldn't have bailed out earlier, that wasn't even  _possible_ , he would've seen that, too, and they wouldn't have parked so neatly. Cars without drivers did not  _drive_ , they careened haphazardly until they just stopped. Simple.

Which meant, naturally, that they  _had_ to be hiding. Somehow.

He wrenched the front door open. No one.

Son of a bitch, this wasn't actually  _possible_ ... they  _had_ to be in the car....

“ _Poner las manos_!”

Xander jumped up and turned, slowly, hands held up. “Hey, relax, buddy, I don't want to hurt any of your cars...”

Turning, he found he was looking at a tall man with a large looking handgun aimed at him. He was able to see, beyond the gun, that he was an incredibly well muscled man with dark brown eyes and a shaved head, but mostly Xander's attention was on that gun. “Look,” he said again, hoping to all that was holy (not that he really believed that much was) that this guy spoke English. “I don't want any trouble. I just have to get this car back to California...”

The Charger's engine revved, and Xander spun. There was still no one in the car, who the  _hell_ was controlling it? Unless it was an  _invisible_ person...

He reached into the car, palms landing on the seat, but there was no one in the way. There really  _wasn't_ anyone in the seat, how was this even possible?

The man with the gun abruptly pressed closer, peering inside the car.

Xanxer moved to back up, to get away from him, to get to his own car. Something was completely, absolutely, mindblowingly  _wrong_ here, maybe the best bet was finding a payphone, calling Mia, maybe the police... he had to get the Charger, but he didn't really relish the idea of getting shot over it.

Except that the man abruptly shifted, pressing that gun against Xander's collar bone, and growled, “Where did you get this car?”

“Six months ago, I was hired to fix it.” He held his hands up, disarmingly. “Last night, someone stole it from my garage. I swear, I’m just trying to get it home so I can get it back to its owner.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Who hired you?”

“Not sure if it's any of your business,” he said tightly, then lifted his hands just a little higher when that made the man's eyes narrow even further. “But it was a girl named Mia Torreto.”

He actually thought for a moment that he'd broken the man. The bald one with the gun just stared back at him, absolutely silent, then just as Xander was about to poke him to see if the man had suddenly died or something, he stepped back, and shoved his gun into the back of his jeans. Xander's shoulders slumped slightly as he leaned back against the car, relieved. “Mia hired you.”

Xander cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

“She would do that,” he muttered, walking around the front of the Charger, slowly. He passed through the headlight's beams, which made his face literally seem to glow, as he slowly assessed the front. “You do the repairs on this, then?”

“Yeah.” He said, confused, but willing to show off a little. He was proud of what he'd managed with the Charger. “It wasn't easy, it was really bashed up, but I pulled all the frame out, straightened out the panels, repainted, rebuilt the engine...”

“Used all the original parts?” He asked, frowning. 

“Used all the original parts,” he agreed, brushing his fingers over the roof. “Whenever I could. Some of the parts weren't salvageable. But most of it... with enough work, most of it I could use. The panels worked fine... most of the engine's original, too. Basic rebuild.”

“She looks good.”

“I know.” He agreed. “Now... I gotta take this car _home_ , so... ah...”

“She's home.”

Xander sighed heavily, closing his eyes. Great. This guy had seemed just fine a second ago, well, once he put the gun away, but the son of a bitch  _was_ involved in the stealing of his car, wasn't he? Shit. Last thing he needed was for some asshole with a  _gun_ to steal Mia's car. “Hey. This ain't my car, I just need to get it back to its owner, all right? So let me take her home. Mia will  _kill_ me if I don't bring her brother's car home.”

The man considered him for a moment, then smirked. He rounded the car, and folded his arms over the roof on the passenger side, leaning on it. “See, I know this car. It has a funny way of always coming home. Never been able to figure it out. It's happened a good half dozen times before. It gets left somewhere... and it comes home. Always does. No matter where in the world we are, the Charger always finds her way home.” He considered Xander for a long moment more, then said, “Name's Dom Torreto.”

He gaped at him for a moment. “...how did I not figure that out?”

Dom arched his brow. 

“I mean... I’m good with that scene. I know the drivers. A lot of them. You're their god and their devil. There is not a car I have worked on without the driver saying something about 'make my car fast enough to beat Dom Torreto's. Every time, that comes up. To beat you is their ultimate _goal_ , their _dream_ , their... _valhalla_. Beating you on the road is their Nirvana. They'll never get there, but they're _so_ bound and determined to try. Dom and Mia... fuck, how did I not _get_ that?”

“Slow night?” He smirked.

“I got hired by your sister six months ago.” Xander rolled his eyes. “I have done nothing, for six months, but devote my life and my will and my _soul_ to your car. And your sister has mentioned, more than once, that it was her idiot brother that rolled it. So yeah, I think I _should_ have figured it out.”

“You probably should have,” he agreed, smirking slightly. His voice was low, a growling rumble in his chest. 

“I mean, I have spent all of my time with your car, I just... well, if you're anything like your car is, you're a bit of a mystery... but one worth figuring out.”

Dom smirked. “Noticed my car's not normal, huh?”

“It broke out of my garage, led me on a chase – and I mean _led me on a chase_ , your car friggin' deliberately led me on a _chase_ – and led me to _Mexico_ , and to you. Your car drove itself to Mexico. I’m completely freaked out by this.” Xander took a deep breath. “It is, oddly enough, _not_ the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, but still, the fact that it drove itself here and taunted me on the way like it actually wanted me to _follow_ it is a little weird.”

“She got you to follow her?” He straightened, glancing down at the car.

“Pretty damn sure she did.” He cleared his throat, awkwardly. “I mean... every time I slowed down, so did the car. I just sort of thought it was an asshole stealing the Charger. Sounds like it's trying to lead me somewhere, doesn't it?”

Dom sighed, and patted the Charger's roof. “Yeah, that does sound like she's leading you somewhere. She owns you now.”

Xander blinked at her. “...excuse me?”

“She owns you. Owns me too, so welcome to the club. She owned my father before me, and if I ever have a child, she'll own him too. The Charger... she ain't just a car.”

“Well, she drove _herself_.” He agreed.

“She does more'n that.” 

Running his palm along the roof of the car, Xander murmured, “She  _does_ move, doesn't she?”

“Hn.” 

“Do I choose to take that as a yes?” He arched a brow.

“C'mon.” Dom patted the hood again, and moved towards the doors of the garage, pausing when he spotted Xander's car sitting on the gravel just outside of the garage. “...that your car?”

“Yeah.” He sighed, frustrated with the lack of answer, but always more than willing to talk about cars. It was what he did. It was the point, the quest, the... reason to keep going. Working on the cars was the closest he got to racing them, to being the one screaming down the quarter mile track, running an entire lifetime's journey in seconds, living a whole life in ten seconds. “This is my car. Piece of shit I bought off of my uncle when I was in high school. I was supposed to go on an adventure, to see the world. Engine fell out of her an hour outta town, and I ain't gone anywhere since. I haven't even been to L.A. To see you guys race. So this is my car. Such as she is.”

“Sounds like you're a driver without a race.” Dom said, deep voice rumbling. “What you running in there?”

“You're not just gonna _ask_ , are you?” He smirked.

He snorted, and took the hood, lifting it up and bracing it, considering the engine under the hood, seriously. “56 Bel Air hard top... not exactly your standard racing vehicle, but... damn. 396 under here... 14-71 supercharger, hm...” Dom lifted his head, and tapped the lines. “You had to use  _NOS_ to keep up with the Charger? Not as good as it looks, is it?”

Xander laughed. “I didn't need that to keep up, sweetheart, I needed that to try and pin your car. I kept up just fine.”

“Did you just call me _sweetheart_?” The other man repeated, arching a brow.

“I – ah – I sometimes say words and don't really know why I say them.” He cleared his throat. “I'll ah... stop talking now.”

Dom snorted, and closed the hood. “Nice car.”

“Thanks.” He smiled, slightly.

Well, you could never say that Xander wasn't  _proud_ of his Bel Air. People looked at it and thought, oh look, a classic collector car. But it wasn't just a classic collector car. He'd put a 396 in there on purpose. It wasn't just a classic car, it was a car with an engine that  _scared_ lesser drivers, because he wanted to be able to lay the hammer down, should it ever come to that – and who knew, it might – and run his Uncle Rory's old cast off in a ten second quarter mile. He wouldn't really be much of a racing mechanic if he couldn't, would he? 

“Hideous colour.” He considered it.

“Yeah, the... ah... sea foam green thing... that was the colour it was when I got it. I know I should have gone with something more... creative, but I sort of couldn't decide what colour it should be, so I... kind of went with the colour it had always been. Tacky, I know, but...” He trailed his fingers over the chrome stripe that ran down the body of his car. “It's my car. Ugly or not, it's my car.”

“The _car_ ain't ugly. The colour is. I got some friends that could fix this for you.” He shrugged, then tilted his head towards the garage. “Wanna come in? I got beer, at least.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that'd be good.”

  
  


\---

  
  


Xander's head hurt.

A lot.

The first thing that had to be explained was what had happened to the Charger – it had bothered Xander so long that he  _had_ to know. But learning what had happened to the Charger meant learning all about Dom himself, about his father the race car driver, about his accident, about his death. About Dom's revenge on the man that had killed his father, about jail, about trying to make a life for himself afterwards. About racing and freedom. 

And about Brian Spilner-O'Connor. 

About a cop that was bound and determined to do the right thing, even if that meant, in the end, doing what the authorities themselves considered to be the wrong thing. A cop that was an amateur driver with a lead food and a heart of gold that had stolen the heart of Dom's sister. And Dom. Brian and stolen Dom's heart somewhere in there, too. 

“So you're a wanted man, fleeing from major robbery with a deadly weapon charges, receiving stolen property,” he guessed. “And street racing charges too, probably. And I just... brought your car to you.”

“My car brought _you_ to _me_ ,” Dom had smirked.

“Your car play matchmaker much?” He had rolled his eyes, shaking his head. 

“She did with Brian.” 

“Oh.” Xander had said, awkwardly, sort of sheepishly. It was a difficult thing to talk about, about being sort of very attracted to the man in front of you – feeling like you knew him intimately, from all the time spent with the Charger – and then hearing about the man he was in love with. “Well... she's a good car. I still don't get it, though. I mean... it drives by itself?”

“She has before,” he admitted. “Yeah.”

“Shit.” He breathed. “But I had that car in pieces... I mean... it's just a _car_... I mean... a _great_ car, don't get me wrong. A very, very _hot_ car, but just a car. I mean... except for the little cosmetic features...”

“You mean the glass bit.”

Xander looked up, surprised. “You knew – of course you knew about that, it was your car. You rebuilt it a bunch of times. Of course you knew that. What is it?”

“I don't know.” Dom admitted. “I thought my father put it in there, but... now I’m not so sure.”

“What do you mean?” He frowned. “A thing like that ain't stock.”

“No.” The other agreed. “It isn't. But whatever gives her the ability to drive... by herself, I mean... whatever that is, I think it has something to do with that.”

“Is that all she does?”

“Well,” Dom snorted, draining the last of his Corona. “She's just a car. An amazing car, but just a car. What the hell else can a car _do_?”

“...good point.” Xander admitted, laughing, then hesitated. “...I should probably try and get back to California. To my garage, to my... life. And I should _definitely_ call your sister.”

The other man hesitated. “You got a phone?”

“No.” He admitted, laughing softly. “Well, yeah, back in California, but... nothing here.”

Dom hesitated, and said, quietly, “I got a phone you can use.”

“Xander, oh my god!” Mia cried, once he managed to get a hold of her, and he winced slightly, leaning on the wall of the garage, cradling the old school rotary phone handset to his ear. Dom was standing in front of him, watching him, and the longer they stood there as he talked to Mia, the more he realized that Dom was watching him with a hungry sort of expression. He hadn't talked to his sister. Ever since he'd arrived in Mexico, what, seven months ago, he hadn't actually spoken to Mia. He felt sort of bad for him. Shit. “I went by your garage this morning, and the door was bashed in, and there were alarms going off, and the Charger was gone - !”

“Mia. _Mia_. Breathe. I know.” He closed his eyes. “I've got the Charger.”

Mia sighed, heavily, and there was a moment of silence, then she murmured, “Are you okay? What happened?”

He met Dom's eyes, and the man gave him a calm, expectant look. “The Charger led me on a merry chase, basically. Were you aware of the fact that it can do that?”

Dom snorted.

“I... yes.” She sucked in a sharp breath, and Mia gasped, “You're with _Dom_ , aren't you?”

He laughed softly. “Yeah. Tijuana. The Charger apparently decided she has to get home.”

“Or she decided you had to meet him.”

Xander cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m sorta thinking there's a chance of that, too. Is my garage still standing, by the way? I mean, since you've been there, and it'll take me at least a few hours to get back... provided I can get back over the border without getting arrested for going over in the  _first_ place...”

“It's fine.” She said, softly. “I got someone out to fix your doors, got those alarms off.. you're fine.”

He sighed, softly. “Thanks, Mia.”

“So you... you are there with Dom?” She asked, gently. “He's there? Is he okay?”

“You could talk to him.” He held out the phone. “Wanna talk to your sister, Dom? She's right here.”

Dom moved as fast as he had moved earlier with the gun, taking the phone quickly from his fingers, and braced the phone against his shoulder, and said, in that deep, rumbling grumble of his, “Hey, Mia.”

Xander smiled sheepishly, and pushed off the wall, meaning to slip away. Dom and Mia deserved some privacy, after all. But Dom held up his hand, motioning for him to stay, and he hesitated, leaning back against the wall, watching him, quietly. Dom was sort of a study in contrasts. He was practically  _made_ of muscles, had muscles on top of muscles. He could make Angel look like a noodle armed wimp, and that was impressive, considering just how incredibly muscled  _that_ man was. But even in the brief time he'd gotten to know him, he'd seen the gentle way that Dom brushed his fingers along the hood of the Charger, even Xander's Bel Air. And now, watching him talking to his sister, Dom spoke remarkably gently to her, promising her softly that he was fine, that he was safe, that yes, he was well hidden.

It was the same sort of contrast that had made him interested in Spike, in Memphis. Rough exterior, violent nature. Mind of an artist.

So he leaned there on the wall of that small, grimy garage, early morning light starting to pour in through the windows, and watched as Dom caught up with his little sister. It was an almost comfortable, almost  _domestic_ moment, all quiet and calm.

_Oh no, Xander, Danger Will Robinson_ . He warned himself.  _He's already got Brian, remember? Don't go falling in love with him._

Dom hung up the phone, then, and Xander tried to focus on the more important question of how the hell he was supposed to get home now, now that he wasn't just furiously chasing the Charger.

Obviously he couldn't just dash back by legitimate means. There was no record of him or his car entering Mexico, and he didn't have his license or passport, or frankly,  _any_ form of ID with him. That sort of raised a lot of red flags for legal type people. Not that he had a ton of experience with this himself, or anything, but he knew enough sketchy types to know that this was true. Willow used to make killer fake ids, in case Buffy or Giles got stopped trying to sneak into the morgue. He could only imagine how displeased the border guards would be, him without an id. Oh, and  _technically_ his car wasn't even street legal... it sort of played with the grey line of what was allowed, and what wasn't, and right now, it was dancing on the 'not so legal' side of that debate. Yeah, that'd go over well.

Finally, they settled on the idea that Xander should basically just go out the way he'd come in, though hopefully with less dramatics. He'd do it the same, too, leave in the middle of the night and pray to not get caught.

Dom gave up his bed, so Xander could get some rest.

He flopped among the unmade sheets and grease smeared pillows, and realized that the scent he'd come to recognize, over the last year, as the Charger's, was actually the scent of Dom. He was surprised it had lingered in the car as well, and as long as it had, but it was strangely comforting, to be engulfed in sheets that smelled of both the man and the car. He rolled onto his stomach, hugging the pillow, when he realized there had been something under it.

Xander drew out the thick, crumpled piece of paper, and realized it was a photo.

It looked like it had been taken at a barbeque, there was a picnic table covered with food in the background. There looked like there was a rollicking good game of nerf football going on in the background, but the two men in the foreground weren't paying much attention. One was Dom, sitting on the edge of the table, one foot up on the bench seat. His arm was tossed, almost lazily, across the shoulders of the other man, a whip thin blond with curls and an innocent half smile. “Dom and Brian” was scrawled on the back in a neat hand that he was pretty sure he recognized as Mia's. 

So this was Brian.

He sat up, considering the photo seriously. Brian had his thumbs hooked in his pockets, but he was leaning just a touch closer to Dom, like he was being drawn into the other's orbit. Dom's arm across the other man's shoulder was casual, but the curl of his fingers was sort of possessive.

Two men, about to plunge headlong into something they hadn't even seen coming.

“Damn.” Xander murmured, flopping back to the bed, tucking the photo back under the pillow where it had been. He could recognize what was going on in that photo, and he knew he didn't stand a flying _chance_ against Brian, even if it was only against the memory of Brian, rather than the man himself. “...not fair, Charger, making me fall for a man that's already spoken for.”

  
  


\---

  
  


The plan was to leave just before midnight, so it was already dark when Xander dug into a meal Dom had made him, before he headed out. They were talking shop, naturally, Xander was explaining just exactly how he'd gotten into the car business. Dom seemed to think it was hilarious, which was a little insulting and a little complimentary all at the same time, laughing at all the appropriate places, groaning in the right spots. It was sort of perfect, actually.

Xander should have expected it, really.

When had things  _ever_ been  _perfect_ for him?

The man door into the main garage was slammed open with a sickening thud, the sound of a wooden door hitting the wall, the doorknob embedding itself in the drywall at the exact same moment that blindingly bright spot lights flared in the windows. Xander threw a hand over his eyes, and gasped, “What the hell - ?!”

“This is the police!” A voice barked over a bullhorn, mechanical and tinny. Dom bolted to his feet. “We have you surrounded. Come on out.”

“What do we do?” Xander gasped.

He thought he'd gotten over the border undetected. Shit, was he caught on video, or something?

Dom held a finger to his lips, and dropped down close to the floor. “Keep quiet,” he muttered. “We have to get to the garage. Get my gun, get to the cars.”

He nodded, quickly.

“We know you're in there, Dominic Toretto!” The tinny voice called. “We don't want any trouble, just come out slowly, hands up...”

Xander's eyes flicked to him. “They're here for  _you_ ?”

“I told you about the truck jobs thing,” he muttered, lowly, already shifting towards the garage. Xander followed him, naturally. Never let it be said that he didn't know how to keep himself alive by following the example of people he knew could live better than he. “But how the hell did they _find_ me...?”

Xander considered that, as they crawled, trying to think of how. And then he remembered something Buffy had told him about, a weird thing that had happened in the year following his exodus from Sunnydale. “Did you manage to piss off any secret services people or anything?”

“Yeah. FBI was in on it.”

He swore under his breath, then suggested, quietly, “They might have wire tapped Mia's phone, then.”

Dom stopped dead in front of him, and Xander crashed into his back.

“I didn't even – I thought by now...”

“That's why you haven't called her, til I needed to call. Because you were worried that it was exactly what they were doing.” Xander murmured, a sinking ball of guilt settling into place in his belly. It was all his fault. If he hadn't insisted that he needed to call Mia, if he'd just been patient enough to find a phone booth instead... “Oh god, Dom, I am so sorry...”

“It's not your fault.” He rumbled, and shifted into the garage proper, the main room, and swore when he spotted the door, which was wide open. “Do you see that?”

Xander shifted closer to him, frowning as he considered that. “The man in the door?”

He nodded, jerkily, quickly.

There was a man, dressed all in black, with a ski mask over his face, and goggles over the little bit of his face the mask would have exposed. The guy was all decked out in a bulletproof vest and a helmet, and the massive gun he held in his hands wasn't really designed for anything other than maximum devastation. He didn't appear to have spotted them, yet, crouched behind the Charger's bumper, but it was really only a matter of time.

“Where's your gun?” Xander breathed. 

Dom nodded towards the workbench, where Xander could just see the dull gunmetal grey of the pistol.

He gauged the distance between himself, the bench, and the guard. “I'm gonna get it.”

“Don't.” Dom growled.

“Hey, I got dumb luck on my side. Have a little faith.”

“Don't you _dare_ ,” he growled, those dark eyes intense and furious. “I have had enough of people dying for me.”

“Dominic Toretto!” The voice on the bullhorn yelled, sounding impatient. “You have two minutes to come out, or we go in!”

“I ain't planning on dying,” Xander grinned. “I still have the drive-all-over-til-I-see-everything roadtrip to take.”

“Don't you even - !”

Xander interrupted him by pressing his lips, hard, to the other man's, in not much of a kiss and really more of a furious mashing of teeth and lips, kissing him furiously for a moment. And when Dom groaned softly, hand raising to just brush Xander's curls, it was even harder to break the kiss. But break it he did, and gasped, “For good luck,” before getting to his feet and running, hunched over, towards the bench.

Movement drew the attention of the man with the gun, instantly, and he swore as the man swung around, gun flicking down to follow his movement.

He slapped his hand down on the bench, and for one heart wrenching moment, Xander actually thought he wouldn't be able to find the gun. It was like time had suddenly slowed to a crawl, all movement except his fruitless search for the pistol stalled, until his fingers finally curled around the distinctive shape of the pistol grip, and he swung it up, time abruptly speeding back up.

Of course, the moment the gunman realized he had a gun, he started firing.

“Holy shit!” He howled, and dropped to the ground behind his Bel Air, taking refuge in his car, and flinched. Bullets sprayed across the work bench and the back wall, then the sound changed to a _thump thump_ of metal piercing metal, and he cried out again when the Bel Air jolted, bouncing on those damn expensive shocks as each of the sprayed bullets hit the front panel. “Stop shooting my goddamn _car_!”

The garage went silent for a moment, dust hanging in the air and Dom motioned to Xander.

“Slide the gun,” he hissed.

He hesitated, and chanced a peek around the front fender of his car – and was rewarded with another spray of gunfire splattering across the side panel of his poor little convertible. “You are  _so_ paying for that!” He roared.

“ _Xander_!” Dom barked.

“Stay _there_ , you are _not_ going to get in more trouble than you are!” Xander stood, though he was still crouched, peeking over the top of the hood. He wasn't terribly comfortable with guns – with swords and crossbows, sure, guns not so much – but buried deep in his memories was a recollection of being a soldier, and it was those memories, those instincts, that had him aiming along the line of the roof, and snapping off three shots at the soldier. None of them had been kill shots, but they had been “stop shooting at my goddamn car” shots, and he smiled in a grim sort of satisfaction when the man cried out and dropped out of sight.

“Shit!” Dom gasped, and his momentary flash of pride disappeared, to be replaced with a sort of sick feeling.

“I'm sorry,” he gasped. “I just sort of thought...”

The other waved off his protests, nodding grimly, and Xander realized that Dom understood. He might not  _like_ it, but he understood.

He swallowed, and sank to sit on the floor again, leaning on the grill of his uncle's old car. It was funny, in a strange sort of way. Xander had left Sunnydale to explore a world where your biggest concern, walking at night, was whether or not you'd get mugged, not whether or not you'd get eaten. He'd thought hopping in a car and going would get him out of trouble, but cars had gotten him into more, not less. Just different kinds of trouble. Trouble like Memphis, like the Charger, like Dom. His bolt for freedom had become something else entirely. 

Maybe the trip  _was_ the point. Not the destination.

He'd thought his trip had been out to see the world, then getting back to Sunnydale, and he thought he'd been waylaid in Oxnard. 

But maybe that had been part of the trip, too. He hadn't been literally on the road with a literal destination. He'd been traveling to here, to now. 

But then again, that might be a little too seriously heavily philosophical for the middle of a gunfight.

No one had shouted at them through that bullhorn for a few long seconds, and for a moment, Xander thought that was a good thing. But then he heard something that was definitely  _not_ a good thing, and he realized what the silence meant.

“Move move move!”

Xander had only been a soldier for one night, over ten years ago. But the soldier he'd been had been a career soldier, and he had known what he was doing. And that was why he knew they were swarming in that door, now. “They're coming!” He howled.

Dom nodded, picking up a massive wrench. “I won't go back to jail.”

_No_ , he thought,  _and you won't. Because if you walk in with a weapon like that, they're going to_ shoot _you._

But Dom bolted up to his feet, racing towards the door, and swearing to himself, Xander scrambled up to help him. Oh sure, he should be hiding, or throwing up his hands and going “I have nothing to do with this” and be safe. But Xander wasn't good at being safe. He was good at being loyal.

Dom cracked the wrench down on the back of the neck of the first man that burst through, and he dropped like a ton of bricks.

A good start, Xander felt.

But then the soldiers kept coming, faster than he could shoot, faster than Dom could shoot, faster than Dom could clobber. Xander was cracked in the jaw by a heavily armoured soldier elbow, but he refused to go down. Call him stubborn. He cracked the handle of the gun against the man's goggles, shattering them and sending him to the ground with a howl.

He snapped around to shoot a man that had been about to shoot Dom in the shoulder, then another in the knee. The gun recoiled with each shot, but his adrenaline was pumping too hard, his heart was absolutely pounding too desperately to even pay attention. His mind was on other things, other necessities. The way his lungs burned, Xander wasn't even sure he was even remembering to breathe.

But then one of the soldiers slammed the base of a massive rifle into Dom's face, and the bald man crumpled. 

“ _Dom!_ ” Xander howled.

And the Charger's engine roared to life.

It was, Xander would insist later, the strangest thing he'd ever seen. Worse than vampires and demon lords and monsters and the apocalypse. Well, no, not  _worse_ , because it wasn't a bad thing, like those were. It was just  _weirder_ . A lot weirder. Oh, it wasn't that the Charger started it's own engine – hadn't it lead him there on a merry chase, after all? No, it wasn't that the engine started itself, roaring with raw power. 

It was what happened next.

The hood sort of popped up, and the fenders themselves popped outwards, then the whole car seemed to lift itself up on its supports, higher than it should go, and abruptly pieces were moving and twisting and turning and the car seemed to be simultaneously growing and shrinking, getting shorter as the panels and the struts shifted and it stood higher and higher, and it sounded like something truly unholy with clicks and whirrs and the singing of hydraulics, and by now the soldiers were starting to turn away, starting to realize that something terrifying and strange was happening. Somehow the Charger was changing, was taking on an almost human like form, with  _legs_ and  _arms_ and a goddamn  _head_ somehow, until it wasn't a sleek black muscle car standing beside them, it was about twenty feet of a giant fucking  _robot_ with a mechanical head and giant mechanical hands and Xander had no idea, exactly, how a robot was supposed to look pissed off, but this one  _did_ , and it suddenly raised a massive metal arm and slammed it down on the soldiers. 

The Charger didn't catch all of them, but it seemed to catch enough that those still standing scrambled out of the building, bolting as though their lives depended on it. Maybe they did. He wasn't really sure what the crazy fucking giant robot that had been Dom's  _car_ ten minutes ago had in mind for the soldiers.

Or them, for that matter.

Not that they really had a chance to figure out what exactly it was, that the Charger was thinking, or doing, because good fucking lord in heaven, it was a giant  _robot_ that was somehow made out of the car that Xander had spent the last six months fixing, and he hadn't seen a single feature on that car that would indicate that it was able to turn into a giant robot, it had just been a  _car_ with a weird little glass thing in the engine and that was it, because abruptly the Charger reached down to scoop Xander up off the floor with one hand, then scoop up Dom's limp body with the other. They were both sort of tossed bodily into the crook of the robot's giant elbow, if a robot could be said to  _have_ a crook in their elbow, or even an elbow at all, then the massive machine burst through the garage doors, out into the desert, and then the Charger started running.

Xander clutched at both Dom and the giant... fucking... robot _arm_ thing that he was holding onto, was being held by, swallowing. “What the  _hell_ , Charger?!”

“Later,” a voice said, though it sounded like it came from a speaker, somewhere, not from any person, and Xander decided that he was really in the mood to live in blissful ignorance, now, if he could manage it, thank you very much, he didn't really think this was a terribly _nice_ prospect. 

Except that Charger kept running, and he kept clinging to Dom.

It must have been at least twenty minutes before Charger stopped, though it didn't really seem to turn into a car again, she – was it kosher to call the Charger a she, still, when it was no longer a classic car, but rather a giant fucking robot? - settled down to hunker on the ground, like a giant robotic copy of a person, and Xander let out an entirely unmanly squeal as he was set down on the sand, beside Dom, who groaned, struggling to sit up. Xander helped the other sit, but his eyes were very firmly on Charger, and he was trying to figure out why the  _hell_ this robot was sitting right here in front of them.

Dom, rubbing his forehead, looked up. “...what the  _hell_ ...?”

Xander cleared his throat. “...this is the Charger, Dom.”

He gaped up at what used to be his car, and was now a giant robot, his eyes widening. “...well, she ain't never done  _that_ before.”

“That doesn't make me feel better.”

The Charger shifted, awkwardly, and fell back onto its robot equivalent of an ass, just sort of considering them quietly. 

“What the _hell_ are you?” Xander demanded, gaping up at Charger, confused. 

“That,” Dom agreed, “Is a good fucking question.”

“Charger is not the name I was given when I was made, but I like it better than the one I had before. You may call me Charger. I am not of your world. I am from a planet called Cybertron, which was destroyed, in a cival war, a very long time ago. Some of us... have found our way here.”

“...you're like the robots on the news.” Xander said slowly. “The ones that were looking for that Sam guy last year, I – I read about it, there was some kind of... Autobots and Deceptors, or something.”

“Decepticons.” Charger corrected, quietly. How a massive robot could be quiet, he didn't know. But she was. 

“Yeah. Them. But they just arrived on earth in the last couple years, Dom said his dad...”

“It is true.” Charger nodded her massive mechanical head, picking a bit of broken metal off of her arm. It was twisted, with bullet holes in it. Clearly she'd been shot too, just like his poor little Bel Air. “Some of us have been here longer. I have been hiding, among the humans, for a very long time. I was sent on a mission, and I – I failed. I have been in hiding for a very long time, and in 1970, when your father bought a car... I was that car. I chose to live amongst the humans, in hiding. It was not easy to remain... hidden. Certain things had to be concealed.”

“Like the fact that you turn into a giant fucking _robot_?!” Xander thew up his hands. “I had you in about a million pieces! You just looked like a normal _car_!”

“Yes.” Charger reached down, and Xander shifted back, alarmed. That giant robotic hand was practically as big as _he_ was, and his instincts screamed for him to get away, as fast as he could, but Charger moved faster than he did, mostly on virtue of being that much _larger_ than him, and her massive metal palm curled around him, holding him. And had the ability to crush him at the slightest touch, which made it even more terrifying. “I have not managed to thank you properly for that, yet. I am unsure that even our medics could have done as fine a job on rebuilding me as you did. Thank you.”

He flushed, and glanced up at Dom, he was watching them both, with an impressed sort of expression. “...you're welcome, Charger.”

“So I guess a person doesn't really own a car like you, huh?” Dom asked, slowly rising to his feet, reaching up to press his palm against the massive robot's “knee”, sort of just considering the way she sat, the way the limbs and joints were formed, as though she was a robotic skeleton come to life. “You're not just a car, you're a... living... not breathing, but doing whatever it is you robots do... person, I guess. Owning you is like... owning a slave. Owning a person.”

“I am not just a car, Dom.” Charger shifted closer to him, red lights glowing steadily in her “face”, like eyes. “I am a Toretto, now. I have been for nearly forty years.”

Xander cleared his throat, sheepishly. 

Dom smiled up at the massive living machine, patting her leg, which used to be the back quarter panel. Was usually the back quarter panel. “Thank you, Charger. You... I guess you know how I feel about family.”

“I do.” She shifted, abruptly reaching down to actually lift Dom off the ground. He yelped, clutching at her fingers, just holding on tight as she lifted him up into the air, closer to her, and said, like it was a whisper – but was practically like yelling – “Why do you think I tried so hard to introduce you to both Brian and Xander?”

He flushed slightly, clearing his throat. 

“Hookay, there... Charger... meddling. Not nice.” Xander patted her leg. “So... we need to get... somewhere. We clearly can't go back to your garage, Dom, the cops are all over it.”

Dom considered that, seriously. He was sitting in Charger's palm, now, legs dangling off like he was sitting on some kind of swing, or something. It was the kind of thing that had Xander smiling up at him like a moron, almost not seeming to realize that he was. Was he someone else, looking at this objectively, he'd have snickered about having got it  _bad_ , but he was very much  _in_ the situation, in the middle of whatever this was. “We should call Brian.”

_That_ sort of jerked Xander back to himself. “...Brian?”

“Yeah.” Dom nodded, looking down at him. “Maybe he can help. I mean, I’m not sure he's an expert on _robots_ , but law enforcement... yeah.”

“I would like to see him as well,” Charger agreed, considering them both.

“So... I should... see if I can find a taxi or something.” Xander said, awkwardly, sort of sheepishly. He felt like the third wheel in this awkward little relationship, which was ironic since Charger was a car and actually had wheels, and the one he was actually really a third wheel for wasn't even here. But even here, he could practically _feel_ the presence of Brian O'Conner. 

And then he yelped when he was abruptly lifted off the ground, and clutched at metal fingers, heart pounding frantically. “Charger!”

Charger held him closer to her face, and he could have sworn that her glowing red eyes actually looked furious. Well, that made some sense, because, after all, red glowing eyes always looked sort of evil and angry, regardless of the emotion really behind them. “Xander Harris. I took you to meet Dom because you are a man on a quest. A man seeking a place, and a man seeking a family. I did not bring you to meet Dom so that you could abandon him.”

He cleared his throat, awkwardly. “...did you know you sound British?”

She sighed, heavily, and turned to Dom. “Talk some sense into him, please?”

“You ain't leaving us, Xander, are you? Abandon your family, like that?”

He looked up, and hesitated before shaking his head. “...no, I won't abandon you. You are... well, I won't. I won't leave. But what the hell do we do, now?”

“We call Brian.” Dom said, again. 

Something shifted and changed, and abruptly Charger was moving, growing longer and shorter even as they sat in her hands, then abruptly pieces started spreading around them and under them and over them as the engine reformed in its normal place and the wheels fell into place and Dom and Xander dropped into the leather bucket seats, which caught them neatly. The speakers for the radio crackled to life, and Charger's voice – which was, in fact, heavily British accented – floated through to them. “We'll drive north. And find a phone so that you can call Brian.”

“...I kind of like this 'car talks to us' thing,” Xander smirked, patting the dash. “You're not so bad for a robot car, Charger.”

Dom snorted.

  
  


\---

  
  


Xander wasn't entirely surprised to see a sleek, pinstriped, racing decal-led Skyline sitting in the rest stop, waiting for them. And he was even less surprised to see a blond man with scruffy curls leaning on the front of the car, arms crossed over his chest.

It was, therefore, even less of a surprise when the Charger sped up.

The two men seemed to dance around the issue, awkwardly, like they were wanting to just throw their arms around each other and embrace, but weren't sure, exactly, how to broach the topic. After all, based on the details Xander had gotten from Dom, as they drove, even though Brian had completely stolen Dom's heart, neither of them had actually managed to tell each other that. They were dancing around the issue, awkwardly, neither of them brave enough – or man enough, Xander thought – to just  _admit_ they totally had a thing for each other.

So Xander rolled his eyes skyward, and gave Dom a shove. “Just  _do it_ , already, before I move in on your territory.”

Brian looked terribly confused, but Dom laughed, and threw his arms around the blond, tugging him against his chest, thumping his back, and the smaller man pressed tighter into him, eyes squeezed tightly shut as he held onto Dom, almost desperately.

Xander smiled, bittersweet.

“Brian,” Dom stepped back, slightly, and offered his hand to Xander. “This is Xander Harris.”

“Hey, man.” The blond stepped forward.

He had an impressive handshake, a tight fast press of a warm, dry hand, and Xander's heart did a little pit-a-pat that made him want to run and hide somewhere so that no one would ever figure it out. “A pleasure,” he said, instead. “I've heard a lot about you.”

_Falling in lust with one taken man is bad enough, Xander. Don't make it two._

“Mia hired him,” Dom said, fingers still curled on Brian's shoulder, like he was afraid, now that he'd gotten his hands on him again, to let him go. “To fix up the Charger after our idiotic man-off.”

Brian snorted, but he looked suitably impressed by the Charger, now.

“Looks good, don't she?” Dom smirked.

“Damn. Yeah.” He shook his head, sliding his palm along the front of the grill, admiring the very sleek lines, the firm beauty of the classic car. The sheer raw power. “Shit, she's beautiful.”

“Well, I had something special to work with.” He cleared his throat. “Time to show him, you think?”

“Yeah.” Dom nodded, stepping back.

Knowing that it was going to happen did not make it happening any less shocking, Xander realized.

Charger shifted up right, still making that whirring sound, parts falling into place as she stood, hydraulics hissing as she bent on one knee, inclining his massive mechanical head to Brian, and in her still-shockingly feminine, shockingly British voice (so shocking because she was a giant machine, not a hot English chick, hell, she wasn't even an English  _car_ ), said, “Hello Brian. It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Holy shit.” He breathed.

Xander thought that sort of summed the whole thing up nicely.

She explained the Autobot – Decepticon Cybertron civil war thing again, adding more detail this time, now that they had time, and weren't being chased by cops with big guns. She explained why they had fought, how beautiful her home world was, how exactly genderless machines were able to actually have genders (Xander had asked. It seemed like a logical question, to his mind.) How any last hope they had left for any kind of machine civilization was now tied up in the fate of Earth. With a torn, sad expression in her red glowing eyes, Charger explained that the Decepticons intended to rule humans, and that the Autobots intended to rule alongside the humans, as equals.

“So why aren't you going to go join your troops?” Xander asked, at last, when she'd fallen silent. They leaned on the front bumper of Brian's Skyline, looking up at her.

“Yeah, if this war really is the end of all things...” Brian hesitated. “Shouldn't you be trying to end, you know, the war _itself_? Join the others, make a future for your kind.”

“It's not that simple.” Charger said, looking down at the ground.

“Sounds simple to me.” Dom frowned.

“No.” She said, firmly, shifting to stand up straighter. “No, it's not that simple. Because yes, the others, they are my kind. But I am a Toretto. You and Mia are my _family_ , Dom.”

The smile that spread across Dom's face could have provided light to a whole room.

“So you're just... going to hang out with a few humans?” Xander blinked. “I mean, you've just transformed in front of a whole lot of American military guys. I may not be an expert, or anything, but isn't that the sort of thing that kind of, you know, draws attention? Cause if they go “Hey, look, Dom Toretto's car is a giant robot”, then they can kill two birds with one stone and get a robot and a wanted criminal, all at the same time.”

Charger reached down to press her palms on the ground, stubbornly. “I have faith. I think you three can do what your governments can't.”

“Are you suggesting we join your _war_?” Brian frowned.

“No.” She said, shaking her massive head. “I want you to help me find something. There is a key, hidden, somewhere on this planet. If we can find this key, we can end the war outright, and it would be over. We could live in peace, and there would be no more struggle.”

“Any idea where this key is?”? Dom frowned, seriously, considering that.

“None,” she admitted. “This is what I was sent here to find. And when I failed to find it, I went into hiding. But I sense that, with the Autobots and the Decepticons here, now, that it will become more urgernt to find the answer. And I believe,that with your help...”

Xander grinned. “Well, I  _did_ say I was looking for an adventure.”

Dom laughed, and clapped both he and Brian on the shoulders. “When my father's car tells me she needs me for a mission to end war, I tend to figure that maybe it's the right thing to do.”

“Thank you,” Charger said, honestly.

Brian shrugged, and stood. “Guess we'd better get moving, then. Xander?” When the other glanced up at him, Brian tossed him the keys to his car. “You mind? I’d kinda like to get caught up with Dom.”

“Mind driving a sexy car like this?” He arched a brow. “No.”

Dom snorted, leaning on Charger's roof within seconds of her transforming back into a car, like he could predict it perfectly, as though he knew his car so perfectly that even when she was transforming from a robot into a car, he could gauge her timing perfectly. “I'll make it up to you later, Xander.”

“Oh, I am _so_ holding you to that, later,” he smirked, pointing at him, and headed towards the driver's side door. 

And a few minutes later, two cars screamed across the desert, dust plumes rising into the air – and yes, most definitely, they were racing as they screamed across the desert.

  
  


\---

  
  


_AFTERWARDS_

Agent Bilkins was angry.

He thought he had the right to be angry, because it had taken two  _weeks_ to be informed of the changes in the Dominic Toretto case, and he was walking into the “scene of the crime”, so to speak, that was the garage Dom had been running in Tijuana. It was a nice little set up, he supposed, although it was grubby and dirty, and it had been sort of overturned. There were bullet holes in the walls and in the one car sitting in the garage.

He'd been told by his men that the VIN numbers for that particular car came back to a guy in California. He'd put out some feelers on that kid, to see what the deal was with him, and found that the boy was from Sunnydale, which actually told him everything he really needed to know about him, right there. That place was a nightmare for the FBI, because every time they had tried to deal with anything there, either before or after the collapse, he kept getting completely case-cock-blocked by Sector Seven. Add that to the fact that the kid had been the one to repair the Charger that Toretto had smashed up during his escape, and that he'd been hired by Mia, and he was alarmed. And when one of his agents informed him that Xander was known to have “connections” with Memphis Raines, the car thief... well. 

Suffice it to say that Xander Harris was now on the FBI's wanted list.

He headed through the living quarters, which had been left mostly intact – though messy as all hell, what was wrong with this man, that he lived like this? - and stepped through into the “bedroom”, which was just a little section separated off from the rest of the room with shelving units, stocked with clothes and food. 

It was a quiet little room, not even much of a room, really, bed unmade. Not even much of a bed, really.

There was a piece of paper sticking out from just under the pillow.

Bilkins stepped forward, quickly, wondering why the  _hell_ no one had caught this yet, and tugged out a crinkled photograph, frowning as he considered the portrait, of a man he was hunting down, and a man he had been actually worked with, on undercover missions, twice now. Son of a bitch.

He tugged his phone out of his pocket, dialing. 

“This is Bilkins. Put out an APB on Brian O'Conner. I think I just found where Toretto is going.”

  
  


  
  


  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for Journey Big Bang 2011. I own no rights to Transformers, Buffy, Fast & Furious, or Gone in 60 Seconds - which is naturally where I borrowed Memphis Raines from. Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> \---
> 
> For more fic and art, you can follow me on Tumblr! [sparrowshellcat](http://sparrowshellcat.tumblr.com)


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